[AU] Direct Debit from Savings/Cheque accounts?

[aushosts]

Does anyone know if there is a way I could create a gateway to submit banking details to a payment processor so they can take funds directly out of my customers account? Customers should never be allowed to modify direct debit banking information as clients need to send us a request in writing to make any changes.

 

I have 2 ideas not sure which is better...

 

My First Idea:

 

Create a new database / table (lets call it tblclientsbankdetails) which as all the clients bank details in it we need to pass along using an XML gateway plug-in. We’d need to design our own interface for staff to update details based on direct debit authorities our clients have faxed us etc…

 

Using a cron job say every half hour (so if a Direct Debit customer buys a domain name – the order will process within the hour if they have a signed direct debit authority on file). So we run a script which looks up the whmcs database and looks for any pending invoices with todays due date and has Direct Debit as the payment method and use something like this http://v3manual.whmcs.com/display.php?id=135 to set the invoice as paid…

 

Problem: If customer was suspended; or it’s a new order whmcs won’t automatically unsuspend the account or create the account until the cron runs 9am the next morning.

 

My Second idea:

 

My second thinking was processing it similar to that of credit cards directly inside whmcs and to do a lookup against the custom tblclientsbankdetails table using their whmcs client id as the object to look up against; or something and select the details out for the client based on their client id and use that data when sending the XML request to our payment processor; similar to how credit cards are processed. This would be done at 9am each morning and allow whmcs to control activations/suspensions etc as it would be run at the checkout if my understanding of the order flow works. Would also come up under the transaction/gateway log…

 

We’d than just have to add an extra page to our frontend to display their direct debit details and details on how to stop / change direct debit info as well as links to the direct debit form they need to fax/mail to us.

 

Basically what we need to provide to submit a direct debit request is:

BSB

Account name

Account Number

Invoice or some description

The amount to direct debit

 

Option two is we store the direct debit info with our payment provider and simply trigger a payment by sending an XML request to them using a unique ID; therefor we don't need to do anything special; however at the end of the day we need to store additional information for the client to be able to direct debit them.

 

All rather easy to do with a simple table lookup based on the client id to plug in the details, not a problem at all – but I’m also wondering if there is something inside WHMCS which could store this info, is this a feature WHMCS plans to bring out; or should we simply look at creating our own module/plugin?

 

Can anyone see anything wrong with my 2 ideas? Which one do you think would work better?

 

Our reason for wanting to direct debit; is that a) its cheaper in that there is no merchant fees, this is really useful when selling high end things like dedicated servers - i.e 50c transaction compared to 3% merchant fee; b) your more likely to get paid too; c) is another payment option for people who don't have a credit card.

[thomasj]

Simpler Option 3:

 

Is there a way simply to have a gate way called Direct Debit - that does nothing except allow the customer to submit their order, and place their Bank details into the order (same as CC now), and then agree to the T&C's??

[aushosts]

That wouldn't work here, we need them to fax us an authority form, so we have a free fax number they'll be able to fax it back on.